The invention has been devised primarily (but not exclusively) in the environment of display racks for use in the retail sale of clothing articles, such as pants, ladies skirts and the like. This type of article is typically displayed on a wire support carried by a frame which is either free standing or secured to a wall. The wire support will have a horizontal limb which extends generally horizontally from the frame and over which the article is draped, and an inclined limb which extends inwardly from the outer end of the horizontal limb and which is attached back to the frame. The frame will normally carry a series of similar wire supports disposed in parallel planes, so that an array of garments (e.g. of different sizes) can be displayed together.
The wire supports in a display rack of this type (often called a "pant rack") are normally disposed relatively closely adjacent one another in parallel planes so that a large number of garments can be displayed in a small space. The supports are normally individually pivotted to the frame of the rack so adjacent supports can be spread apart to gain access to a particular garment. In practice, in a store, what tends to happen is that a customer attempting to examine a particular garment will push aside an adjacent garment which means that the support carrying that garment and all of the supports behind it will pivot back with respect to the frame. Unless the customer takes the trouble to return all of those frames to their initial positions (which is unlikely) the result is that the parallelism of the supports is lost and different supports project outwardly from the frame at different angles creating an untidy appearance.
Appearance can also be disadvantageously affected by the fact that gaps tend to appear in the array of articles carried by the rack as individual garments are sold. In practice, it is often found that certain type of garments will sell more quickly than another garment on the same rack; for example, garments of a particular color or size may sell more quickly than other garments. Store personnel are then faced with the need to restock the wire supports individually. Generally, a determined arrangement of garments will be required on the rack (e.g. with particular sizes and/or colors grouped together) which means that it will be necessary for the store personnel to carefully pay attention to the restocking of each individual support with the garment of the correct type.
An object of the present invention is to provide improvements and store fixtures which address these problems and which also provide other advantages.